


Communication is Important

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [10]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Hurt Bruce Banner, M/M, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:16:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26932000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: Organizing the team after a battle isn't unlike herding cats.Or: Tony is caught in the rain, Steve shouldn't have been left alone, Thor is unconscious, Bruce is hiding something, Clint just wants a nap, and somehow Natasha ends up driving.
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Tony Stark
Series: October 2020 Prompts [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 4
Kudos: 76





	Communication is Important

**Author's Note:**

> Day 10, for the prompt "blood loss"

  
  


What had started out as a light sprinkling had now turned into a full-on downpour. Natasha could barely see out of the windows as she drove, but since there wasn’t anything except fields and the occasional lonely barn for miles around, she was more worried about skidding off the highway.

Mostly because she wasn’t sure what a tow truck would do with the Black Widow suit, the two handguns and the bow and quiver lying on the floor of the car, and the snoring Clint—who was also still in his suit—in the passenger seat. Oh yeah, and the fact that this car may have been… hastily borrowed instead of obtained through proper transactional means. She wondered if “I’m an Avenger” would get her out of any awkward questions. It would be something new to try, anyway.

“Clint, tell me when we’re at the next exit,” Natasha said, glancing quickly at the passenger seat to make sure Clint had nodded. He was slumped with his chin on his chest and his head practically against the window, but his eyes were open, tracking the movement of each raindrop as they washed back and forth off the windshield wipers.

She adjusted the cell phone that was caught between her shoulder and her ear. “Sorry, what was that?”

Steve’s voice came out of the other end of the call. It had been a relief to learn that he could use a phone, even if she hadn’t been expecting it; somewhere in her mind she still thought of Captain America as the clips from the old reels that ended up in every S.H.I.E.L.D. orientation video. But he’d picked most things up remarkably fast—faster than Thor, anyway, who Natasha had maybe seen touch a phone once, and that was only to play two-player Fruit Ninja with Clint while they were waiting at headquarters to be debriefed. “I was saying that maybe bringing the quinjet wouldn’t have been such a bad idea right about now.”

“Hindsight’s 20/20.” Natasha heard Steve’s sigh through a hint of static and continued. “Look, none of us were expecting it to go south this quickly—definitely, no one expected to have to deal with that… fear… magic… what the hell did Thor call it?”

“I don’t think I can even pronounce it.” Steve paused for a moment. “Yeah, I won’t try. Something from Asgard, but all I know is that it made us go haywire and now I don’t know where half my team is.” There was a huff at the end of the sentence, and Natasha pictured Steve leaning against a wall with the phone to his ear. “How close are you?”

“Enough. Tony gave me coordinates when he called, but his suit’s probably dead now.” Natasha squinted through the blinding storm. “You should’ve seen it; the Hulk just snatched him up and ran the second he transformed. I think he could tell what was going on and knew he wanted out.”

“I don’t blame him. All I remember is waking up in that ditch in the field and seeing Thor going supernova in the sky right above my head. I’m surprised I didn’t get electrocuted, with the shield and all.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Hasn’t woken up yet. But I think the doctors are… yeah, hang on.” There was a muffled noise, like Steve was either covering up the phone or slipping it into his pocket, and his voice disappeared.

Natasha used the opportunity of silence to peek out the window again, eyeing a solitary sign propped among tall yellow and brown stalks. Rain was pouring down it, and its colors were already faded, but she could still make out the numbers—and she stopped the car with a splash as the front tires hit a muddy puddle.

“ _ One _ job, Barton.”

“Huh?” Clint’s eyes popped open and he groaned, stretching uselessly against the back of the seat. “‘Was just resting.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and executed what was probably not the safest U-turn, given the mud-and-rain-slick road and the fact that even with headlights, she could barely see two feet ahead, but the highway was deserted and she was on a time-sensitive mission.

She muttered some pointed remarks about people whose code names were supposed to be Hawkeye as she turned back into the exit they’d missed, which broke off into a tiny little dirt road that was now a mud road eating her tires.

The car slowed to a trundle as the road wound off toward what looked like an abandoned shed in the middle of the giant field. As Natasha scanned the area back and forth, she spotted two drenched figures huddled together on the side of the road.

Her headlights shone over the two of them as she pulled up, illuminating the faces of Tony and Bruce as they jumped up, rain pouring down their faces and slicking their hair and clothes—Natasha was relieved to see that Bruce  _ had  _ clothes, even the threadbare scraps that had obviously been rummaged for out of that shed—close against them. 

“Need a ride?” she called through the window, and Tony grinned back at her, holding out his thumb in a cheeky impression of a hitchhiker’s gesture as he and Bruce hurried toward the car.

Steve was talking to her again, now sounding a little strained. “Uh, Nat, the doctors are asking me what his blood type is; what the hell am I supposed to… oh, yes, hi!” His voice was louder now, and Natasha got the feeling he was talking to somebody she couldn’t see. “Relation to patient? Um—”

Natasha was positive that only her years of training to mask her emotions was keeping her from laughing out loud.

“—I’m his… brother,” Steve finally decided. “Uh, his brother... Roger. Yes, I’d be happy to do that!” There were more muffling sounds and then his voice dropped into a barely-audible range that was tinged with panic as he whispered, “Nat,  _ help _ .”

“You’ll figure it out,” Natasha reassured him. An endeavor that did not seem likely to be successful, but she now had two more soaking-wet teammates in her car, one of whom could turn into a rage monster and both of whom had been just as dosed with that Asgardian magical fear ray as she and Clint had.

(She did not want to think about  _ that _ particular experience ever again, thanks. They could gloss over it in their official report, and then she could go down to the training room and take out a bunch of practice dummies, and then she could possibly go to the top of the Tower and scream for a little bit until it was all out of her system)

“Just wait till I get back.” Ignoring the beginning of Steve’s protests, Natasha hung up the phone and tossed it into the cupholder. She glanced backward just as the side door slammed shut and Tony and Bruce practically fell over each other onto the seat. Rain was already dripping off of them and pooling on the floor, and she made a mental note to see if she could somehow towel the car off before she returned it.

“How’re you two liking the wide open countryside?” Clint asked, leaning around the seat to grin at them. His bow had ended up in his hand again, and he was idly running a finger up and down the curve.

Bruce made an incoherent noise and buried his face in Tony’s shoulder as the latter shook his head and leaned back heavily, his eyes stuck wide open. Both of them were starting to shiver, so Natasha flicked the heater on to matching sighs of relief.

“You know what?” Tony finally asked. His shirt was so thoroughly soaked that Natasha could clearly see the shape of the arc reactor straining through it, a faint blue glow lighting onto Bruce’s wet hair. “I’m over this magical stuff. Do you guys remember when it used to be regular stuff? Because I feel like once we ramped up to magic, now every first-law-of-thermodynamics-defying space alien in the universe wants a piece of us. Life was so much easier when I was just fighting my dad’s old frenemies.”

He paused there, as though waiting for one of the others to respond, but Bruce was half passed out already, letting almost all his weight fall on Tony, and both Natasha and Clint made the same “mm” noise at once.

“Seriously? I know you guys like your silence, but I’m trying to establish some camaraderie here.” Tony gestured with the arm that wasn’t being leaned on by Bruce. “Come on. Talk it out.”

Natasha shrugged. She had started to drive again, back the way they’d come on a road that wasn’t any less slippery than before. The rain was still practically punching out of the sky, and she was just waiting for the inevitable flash of lightning. “When you’re in this business for long enough, you kinda learn not to be surprised.” The more she’d said that over the years, the more true it had become; it hadn’t been  _ that  _ long ago that she was giving Coulson a skeptical glance as he showed her a newspaper with a man in metal armor on the front cover, and only two years later, she’d been shooting down aliens in New York City.

Clint angled the end of his bow at her in agreement. “I don’t get paid to be surprised. They just point me in a direction and I shoot.”

“None of you are any fun.” Tony tilted his head awkwardly to the side so he could look down at Bruce, who hadn’t moved a muscle since collapsing on him. “So, where’re Cap and Blondie?”

Natasha smirked. “Rogers is being introduced to the wonders of the modern healthcare system.”

As though on cue, her phone vibrated from the cupholder. She nodded at Clint, her hands still on the wheel, and he scooped it up, narrowing his eyes at the screen.

“Who is 005818?” 

“It’s Steve’s S.H.I.E.L.D. ID number.”

“But this is from your contacts.”

“It is.”

Clint opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something else, but apparently changed his mind and swiped his finger across the screen to accept the call. He held the phone up to his ear. 

“Hawkeye speaking. Hey, Cap.” Clint stared out the window as he listened, his bow now leaning sideways across his lap. “Huh. Yeah, I’d say just pick one. It probably won’t hurt him, he’s a god. Uh, you can put this number if you want. Uh-huh. Yeah.” There was a long pause, during which Clint’s face slowly deepened into a frown. “No, fraud is illegal. Yeah, yeah, you should be set, just make sure he doesn’t start sparking in his sleep. We’ll be there in five minutes. God bless America.”

He hung up and dropped the phone back into the cupholder as Natasha raised her eyebrows.

“We’re a half hour away from the main road.”

Clint shrugged. “I was close.”

_ S.H.I.E.L.D.’ll probably get there sooner than we will anyway.  _ Natasha glanced over her shoulder as they drove past yet another stretch of field. “You’re being uncharacteristically quiet back there, Stark; everything good?” She wasn’t sure what exactly to compare it to, but being grabbed out of the air by the Incredible Hulk while wearing a heavy metal suit couldn’t have been a fun experience, especially when they had all still been reeling from the effects of whatever that Asgardian magic had been.

A shiver ran through Tony’s body even though the heat was on full blast, and raindrops shook off the end of his hair. “Well, my fingers are completely numb now, but that’s not a problem, is it?” His voice was casual, but even in the rearview mirror Natasha could spot the darkening bruises from where the suit had evidently banged against him.

She didn’t have time to say anything else before Bruce was mumbling something against Tony’s sleeve. Tony sat up immediately and shifted so he was at a better angle to look down at him.

“What was that, big guy?”

Bruce lifted his head the slightest bit, turning it so that Natasha could see the edge of his face for the first time since he’d gotten into the car. His eyes were struggling to blink open, and his mouth barely moved as he repeated himself.

Tony relaxed, and his voice took on the tone that Natasha had gotten used to hearing when she wandered by the lab. “Hey, you don’t need to apologize. Even though I can’t believe you actually kidnapped me.” He paused. “Maybe you do need to apologize for that.” He was still speaking softly, though, and Bruce closed his eyes in a way that didn’t seem intentional.

Natasha heard a strangled noise from beside her, and turned to the passenger seat to see Clint pressing his hand against his mouth, his eyes sparkling as he tried to stifle his laughter.

Tony didn’t tear his gaze away from Bruce as he called, “No one asked you, Birdbrain.”

“No, no,” Clint managed. “It’s just that who knew you made such a great damsel in distress.” He must’ve caught Natasha return to deliberately staring out the front window, because he grinned again.

To his credit, Tony merely raised his eyebrows. “Hmm. I think someone’s jealous.”

He went to put his arm around Bruce, but the moment his hand made contact, Bruce flinched away.

That was one way to get Clint to stop laughing. The mood in the car suddenly dropped like a stone. Natasha caught a glimpse of Tony’s frown in the rearview mirror, a frown that was carefully arranged, but didn’t fully hide the hurt.

Because that wasn’t  _ normal  _ for Bruce, not anymore, at least. Sure, when they’d first moved in to the Tower and everyone was still sizing each other up (there was a span of several days when Clint wouldn’t talk to any of them except Natasha, to the point where Thor had had to ask if Barton was actually living there or not; when Tony hadn’t  _ stopped _ talking, about anything and everything—at least about anything besides the wormhole; when Thor had carried that hammer of his everywhere, not even setting it down in his sleep; when Steve had woken up at dawn to wander around the city and not come back until the sky was pitch dark, his eyes hollow even as he’d start up an easy conversation; and when Natasha… well, Natasha was good at her job. She’d spent a lifetime perfecting a flawless mask, and if any of the others had spotted cracks in it, they hadn’t said anything), there were a few bumps in the road. Bruce had still been thinking about running, his life shaped by danger for so long that he couldn’t imagine that anything had changed. So he’d hide away in his room or in the labs (because Natasha could tell that he couldn’t resist a lab belonging to Tony Stark), always hovering in the corner whenever they were all in the same room, shying away from all contact, even hints of it.

Now, though—for the most part, anyway—they had all warmed up to each other. It had taken a couple missions (Natasha couldn’t think back to those first few without wincing), a couple meals, a couple long flights back on the quinjet, and even a movie night that was “ _ JARVIS’s idea, don’t look at me, Romanoff,” _ but they had warmed up to each other. 

_ If “warming up to each other” is a good word for Bruce and Tony _ , Natasha thought, remembering the events of one (very) late-night post-mission celebration, involving an only-slightly-drunk Tony and a red-faced but delighted Bruce. 

Maybe Bruce was just jumpy from his transformation? That did happen sometimes (he’d broken a row of glass beakers once when Steve shut the door a little too loudly), but he was also soaking wet and shivering like crazy, so Natasha would’ve assumed he’d want to share a little extra body heat.

So she tapped her hands over the steering wheel and casually asked, “Hey, Bruce, what’s the last thing you remember before the fight?”

Both Tony and Clint swiveled around to look at her like she had three heads, but she ignored them in favor of listening for Bruce’s response.

“Uh…” Bruce forced himself to lift his head. “I think, like… that Asgardian whoever-it-was—”

“Sorcerer,” Natasha supplied.

“Asshole in a cape,” Clint offered.

“Off-brand Dragons and Dungeons character,” Tony finished.

“It’s Dungeons and Dragons,” Bruce corrected under his breath, before he gestured weakly around the car and continued. “We were all in the field, and then there was this glow, and—” As he talked he had been trying to sit up straighter, but suddenly he gasped and grabbed for his side.

His hand came away red.

The car lurched over a dip in the road as Natasha’s hands turned to iron on the steering wheel. She tried to get a better look in the mirror, but all she could see was Bruce staring at his hand for a moment before wiping it off on his pants and saying, “Huh. So that’s what that was.”

“That’s what  _ what _ was?” Tony demanded, trying to peer over Bruce’s shoulder, but Bruce kept squirming out of the way.

“Never mind. It’ll probably heal on its own.”

“Oh, are you planning on transforming in the car?” Tony attempted again to get a closer look at the rapidly growing red stain on Bruce’s shirt, but Bruce just curled against the door. “Bruce, come on, just let me see.”

“It’s radioactive.”

“So I’ll be careful.” Tony made a frustrated noise, and there was rustling from the back seat as Bruce apparently tried to see how far he could merge himself into the right side door.

Natasha caught Clint’s gaze; he was watching the proceedings with a surprised expression, but he hadn’t moved except to turn around. “Hey. I need to drive, can you—” She jerked her head meaningfully toward the back seat, and Clint nodded quickly.

“Did you bring a med kit?” he asked, glancing down at the floor as though it might be rolling around down there.

“Steve took it. In case he couldn’t get Thor in the hospital.” Natasha chanced another look behind her and almost drove into the field as Clint cursed. Tony had finally managed to get Bruce to look at him and had pulled up the bottom of his shirt; there, on the side of Bruce’s stomach, was a gash caused by something more offbrand-Dungeons-and-Dragons than a gunshot or a knife, bleeding out profusely onto the car seat. Some of the dried blood around the edges of the wound was even tinged green—he’d been hiding this even as the Hulk.

“Bruce—” Tony started, his shoulders slumping, but Bruce shook his head.

“I figured it would’ve healed by now.” He frowned down at it as though the two of them had had some intellectual disagreement. “The Other Guy usually…” He trailed off, his head starting to list sideways.

Tony caught him. “Okay, okay. We’ll take care of this.” He looked up at Natasha and Clint. “Med kit?”

“We’ve been over this already.” Natasha turned another corner; the stalks of hay or wheat or whatever this stuff was were starting to get sparser, but they weren’t out of the field yet. “Is there any way you can try and put pressure on it without actually touching it?”

Dumb question. The blood was oozing out of the wound in trickles, dripping down over Bruce’s pants and leaving a wet smear on the car seat. Every time he breathed (which was a lot less often than she’d like), the wound pumped open and Bruce’s face went tight with pain.

Tony was already opening his mouth, staring at Bruce in a way that was set with determination, but Clint beat him to it.

“No, there is not, absolutely there is not. Unless you think Banner could do it himself, which…” Clint waved a hand at Bruce, who was all but completely limp, his eyes fluttering shut as his breathing came out in quick gasps. “... yeah, I’m betting not.” 

“So what, exactly, is your brilliant solution, then?” Tony asked. His hands were hovering over Bruce’s back, but even Tony Stark apparently had a modicum of self-preservation—however reluctant—and kept his bare skin away from the blood.

Clint turned to Natasha. “Are we still half an hour away from the main road?”

“Not for long we aren’t.” Natasha shoved her foot down on the gas.

* * *

S.H.I.E.L.D. Medical wasn’t such a bad place, once you got used to it.

And Natasha was, in the simplest terms possible, used to it.

It had been an overwhelming relief to reach the hospital, even the middle-of-nowhere regular hospital, because the quinjet had already been called when they got there, and Steve Rogers had come running out of the parking lot the moment he saw their car.

“They kicked me out,” he’d said as soon as Natasha had parked and slammed the door behind her, following her curiously to the back seat. “But Thor looked like he was waking up, so—what the _ hell? _ ”

“Yeah, that about sums it up,” Natasha had said as Tony stumbled out of the car, revealing the still form of Bruce lying in the back.

Steve hadn’t asked any more questions and just helped them get Bruce to the jet. A little while later, all six of them had landed at headquarters, unanimously skipping over the mission debriefs and write-ups and reports and going straight to the nearest medical attention—one that had dealt with them all before, since neither Bruce or Thor were exactly typical patients. The rest of them had proceeded to hang around until they were on the verge of being kicked out themselves, but one flash of Natasha’s and Clint’s level seven IDs, one conspicuous holding of his shield by Steve, and one look from Tony, and they were left alone.

Now Natasha perched on the end of one of the empty beds, cross-legged and tapping absent-mindedly through her phone. Steve was asleep in a chair by the door, his fist propped up on the armrest and squishing into his face, and Clint had vanished off somewhere a while ago, because  _ someone  _ had to give the actual details of the mission to the higher-ups and it had been “too quiet” in here anyway.

Thor was still passed out on another bed, tangled in a white sheet and breathing softly into the pillow. Whatever he’d been hit with, it was still yet to wear off, and most of the doctors had taken one look at him and suggested that waiting for that to happen was probably all they could do.

And Bruce… well, Bruce was also out cold in the bed next to him, the rise and fall of his chest carefully regulated by the bandages Natasha knew were wrapped around his abdomen. He looked normal, if pale and exhausted, but that was pretty much the norm after an extended transformation. It had taken a few minutes to track down a doctor who was willing to work with irradiated blood, but with some very stringent precautions (apparently there was already a protocol in place for this, which Natasha hadn’t been too surprised to find out—S.H.I.E.L.D. was nothing if not thorough) Bruce had gotten fixed up enough to let his enhanced body do the rest.

As soon as the last doctor had left the room, though, Tony had crawled up onto Bruce’s bed with him, both of them still a little damp and shivering from the downpour they’d been caught in, and Bruce had just lifted his arm in the least energy-expending way possible to beckon Tony closer. Their exhaustion had caught up with them soon enough, though, and now both of them were fast asleep and wrapped around each other so tightly Natasha couldn’t imagine how they’d ever get out.

Not that  _ that  _ looked like a problem for the near future. Neither of them had moved since they’d fallen asleep, pressed up with the blankets twisted around their knees and Tony’s head under Bruce’s chin. There were matching looks of contentment on both their faces, like as long as the other one was there, there wasn’t anything else in the world to worry about—except possibly getting squished.

Bruce sighed a little in his sleep and Tony shifted closer, his hand coming up to rest against Bruce’s back.

_ They’re gonna get a  _ kick  _ out of this tomorrow,  _ Natasha thought with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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